Emissions Sensitivity Analyses

active

Transportation conformity is required under the Clean Air Act (CAA) section 176(c) to ensure that federally funded highway and transit projects conform to a State’s air quality implementation plan. Conformity means that transportation activities will not cause new air quality violations, worsen existing air quality violations, or delay timely attainment of the relevant air quality standard, or any interim milestone. Several project types are currently exempt from conformity (40 CFR 93.126) or from regional emissions analysis (40 CFR 93.127). However, many of these project types are ambiguous on the specific conditions that meet the exemption. The objective of this project is to identify specific project types that Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) find challenging to classify as exempt or not and to conduct a sensitivity analysis to highlight different conditions that may lead to an exempt status (i.e., the project has negligible changes in emissions).